PageRank: Standing on the shoulders of giants

PageRank is a Web page ranking technique that has been a fundamental ingredient in the development and success of the Google search engine. The method is still one of the many signals that Google uses to determine which pages are most important. The main idea behind PageRank is to determine the importance of a Web page in terms of the importance assigned to the pages hyperlinking to it. In fact, this thesis is not new, and has been previously successfully exploited in different contexts. We review the PageRank method and link it to some renowned previous techniques that we have found in the fields of Web information retrieval, bibliometrics, sociometry, and econometrics

Climbing Atop the Shoulders of Giants: The Impact of Institutions on Cumulative Research

While the cumulative nature of knowledge is recognized as central to economic growth, the microeconomic foundations of cumulativeness are less understood. This paper investigates the impact of a research-enhancing institution on cumulativeness, highlighting two effects. First, a selection effect may result in a high correlation between "high-quality" institutions and knowledge of high intrinsic quality. Second, an institution may have a marginal impact -- an incremental influence on cumulativeness, conditional on the type and quality of knowledge considered. This paper distinguishes these effects in the context of a specific institution, biological resource centers (BRCs). BRCs are "living libraries" that authenticate, preserve, and offer independent access to biological materials, such as cells, cultures, and specimens. BRCs may enhance the cumulativeness of knowledge by reducing the marginal cost to researchers of drawing on prior research efforts. We exploit three key aspects of the environment in which BRCs operate to evaluate how they affect the cumulativeness of knowledge: (a) the impact of scientific knowledge is reflected in future scientific citations, (b) deposit into BRCs often occurs with a substantial lag after initial research is completed and published, and (c) "lagged" deposits often result from shocks unrelated to the characteristics of the materials themselves. Employing a difference-in-differences estimator linking specific materials deposits to journal articles, we find evidence for both selection effects and the marginal impact of BRCs on the cumulativeness of knowledge associated with deposited materials. Moreover, the marginal impact increases with time and varies with the economic and institutional conditions in which deposit occurs.

On the Shoulders of Giants? Global Science, Resource Asymmetries, and Repositioning of Research Universities in China and Russia

Chinese and Russian universities are increasingly drawn into center-periphery repositioning, as they compete for symbolic, financial and intellectual resources locally and globally. However, their strategies on national and institutional linkages differ with regards to the individual scientist’s powers in knowledge production. As global hierarchies of knowledge productivity benchmark prestigious publications, and national industries seek access to innovative products in global research and development labs, globally-connected talents become essential for elevating local research performance. This paper examines the undercurrents of center-periphery repositioning in Russia and China by comparing their research and development funding and performance data, as well as contrasting their global standing with Brazil, India, South Africa and G-7 members. A method of comparative multi-layered patterning of mixed data sets is used to reflect on center-periphery dilemmas facing the Chinese and Russian scientists.published_or_final_versio

Unburdening the shoulders of giants: a quest for disconnected academic psychology

In current academic psychology, scholars typically develop their research and ideas by drawing on the work of other contemporary and preceding psychological scientists and by following certain conventions of the field. I refer to this variant of psychology as connected because the emphasis is on connecting various research findings and ideas generated by different scholars (e.g., by showing how they are related to each other via referencing). In this article, I argue that, although connected psychology advances psychological knowledge, it restricts the total amount of knowledge that could eventually be produced and therefore limits the potential of the discipline to improve the understanding of psychological phenomena. As a solution, I propose that, alongside the currently existing connected psychology, disconnected psychology should be established. In disconnected psychology, researchers develop their ideas by following the main principles of psychological method, but they are disconnected from a “field” consisting of other psychologists and therefore do not follow the discipline’s norms and conventions. By drawing on one of the core constructs from information theory—information entropy—I argue that combining the two streams of psychology would result in the most significant advancement of psychological knowledge

Journal Self-Citation XXI: Bibliography as Artifact – How Citations Are Data

Citation rates are important criteria for judging an author’s impact in the research community or discipline. They form one of the many indicators of research quality that help people less familiar with a field understand the effectiveness of a research paper or individual. The contents of a bibliography or set of references are also markers that help orient the reader to the framework of a piece of writing. Lately, journal publishers have paid increased attention to citation rates as more and more journals vie to be included in abstracting and indexing services. These lists act as a filter for libraries and bulk subscription brokers, so they can affect circulation and hence, revenue. Because of this, some journals have required authors to cite prior papers from the same journal when submitting research, even going so far as to specify how many citations are needed for a paper to be considered. This paper argues that commercial considerations must not outweigh the primary academic purpose of a citation list. Not only are there a host of conventions associated with citations that arise from author integrity and community relationships, but the bibliography is itself research data for another discipline. Compelling and precise portraits of researchers can be derived from such data. A case from library science on the late Rob Kling’s sources illustrates the value of preserving the integrity of citations for the purpose of building and understanding a discipline, not a revenue stream

Appropriation of value in Biomedical research outcome at Public Research Organisations

Transactions on biomedical research outcomes bring into play strategies that are determined by leveraging resources into quasi-markets and on options based on expectations. To govern such transactions, the choice of appropriate governance structures and the governance of interaction are all too often in remittance of risk and uncertainty. Organisation and communities are prompted by issues concerning intellectual property (IP) to underwrite information, which is inherently fraught with difficulties of discerning ownership and quantifying qualitative business variables. Against that backdrop, we enquire on the mechanisms underpinning value dissipation and value appropriation of biomedical research outcomes to make proposition on the organisational antecedence to innovation. It is a preamble study with the view to developing a meso-level framework to describe mechanisms of value appropriation of upstream biomedical (non-invasive) research at Public Research Organisation. Its underpinning is largely based on the availability appropriability regimes and viability of organizational governance decisions and how the choice of organizational governance form affects both the creation and appropriation of economic value

Citations: Indicators of Quality? The Impact Fallacy

We argue that citation is a composed indicator: short-term citations can be considered as currency at the research front, whereas long-term citations can contribute to the codification of knowledge claims into concept symbols. Knowledge claims at the research front are more likely to be transitory and are therefore problematic as indicators of quality. Citation impact studies focus on short-term citation, and therefore tend to measure not epistemic quality, but involvement in current discourses in which contributions are positioned by referencing. We explore this argument using three case studies: (1) citations of the journal Soziale Welt as an example of a venue that tends not to publish papers at a research front, unlike, for example, JACS; (2) Robert Merton as a concept symbol across theories of citation; and (3) the Multi-RPYS ("Multi-Referenced Publication Year Spectroscopy") of the journals Scientometrics, Gene, and Soziale Welt. We show empirically that the measurement of "quality" in terms of citations can further be qualified: short-term citation currency at the research front can be distinguished from longer-term processes of incorporation and codification of knowledge claims into bodies of knowledge. The recently introduced Multi-RPYS can be used to distinguish between short-term and long-term impacts.Comment: accepted for publication in Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analysis; doi: 10.3389/frma.2016.0000

Romans, Roads, and Romantic Creators: Traditions of Public Property in the Information Age

The medialibrary is included within an overall development plan. This plan has been drawn up by the communal office and aims to finish in 2030. The aim of this design is to promote unification and comunication, especially in the central area of Sollentuna. The challenge that faces the municipality is to eliminate the division that has been forming since the time gave impetus to the rail.Today is not only the railway passing through the sector but also the commuter train.The two sectors clearly formed because of this communication system were even more sharply divided during the construcction of the so called million housing program.I have proposed a subway train. The media library has the purpose to contain several features that appeal to the publicon both sides of the line and thus generate a social contact that can develop good communication and cooperation. It was considered the young generation and their needs without leaving aside elderly.The design, the differens spaces and rooms, the buliding facilities, are intended to generate communication and unification among the users.Den Mediateket ingår i en övergripande plan för utveckling i centrala Sollentuna. Kommunen har en plan som de syftar till att avsluta år 2030. Syftet med denna konstruktion är att främia enande och kommunikation i den centrala delen av Sollentuna. Uttmaningen som  kommunenär har i framtiden är att eliminera den klyfta som har bildas efter järnvägskonstruktion. Järnvägen (och pendeltåget)passera genom området. De två sektorerna, tydligt utformade på grund av detta kommunikationssytem, var ännu kraftig isäer under byggande av den så kallade milljonprogramm. Skillnaden i både ekonomisk och social karakter blev tydligt markerade.Den mediabiblioteken har till syfte att innehålla flera funktioner som tilltalar allmänheten på båda sidor on linjen och därmed generera en social kontakt som kan utveckla en god kommunication och samarbete. Jag har övervägt den yngre generationen och deras behov utan all lämna åt sidan den äldre generationen. Anläggninggar, med den nya designen, är avsedda att generera kummunikation och enande bland användarna av alla åldrar